Re: Linguaphobia and Linguocentrism

Having spent only three weeks in the US, I'm not sure of how
representative these first-impressions are, but I was struck at not
only the linguaphobic phenomenon but also the simple ignorance of most
people about language or indeed about other countries. Ok, so
Australia's a long way away, but it's still a pretty big country, yet
I was asked more often than I like to count if my parents knew
English, or if I could teach X to say Y in "Australian". Then of
course they wanted to know if I rode kangaroos and shot crocodiles. :)

On the attitude of "learn English because it's most important", I hate
learning any language just because it's going to be practical one
day. Sure, Welsh, Icelandic, Hungarian, Quechua etc aren't going to be
big business languages in the forseeable future, but they're much more
fun to learn. As far as English being a "world language", that will
either not come to pass due to changes in world economy or it will. If
it does, then it'll probably go the same way as Latin and fragment
before long. Maybe in two or three thousand ye'll have the
anglo-Asiatic language family or some such creature.

Regards,
Ben